Chapter 38: The Gate (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 38: The Gate (3)
For a moment, Choi Hyena wondered if there was something wrong with her ears.
“…What?”
“I said, from now on, don’t call me ‘you’ this or ‘you’ that. Call me ‘darling’ affectionately.”
The sight of Kang Hyun-woo’s smiling face made her stomach twist in knots.
“Have you finally lost your mind? Just because I’m letting things slide since you’re my savior, you think I’m a pushover?”
“Then starve.”
Ha! Threatening her with food, of all things. As the sole heir of the Seongbuk Choi family, raised to practice self-control, such a cheap threat would never work on her.
“How cheap…!”
She wanted to say, but she was just too hungry.
It felt like she’d eaten dinner not too long ago, but her stomach was screaming for food.
The hunger was making her nauseous, her stomach twisting into a knot, and to make matters worse, that damn bastard was cooking ramen right next to her.
“…Gulp.”
The smell of ramen stimulating her senses was driving her crazy.
“Looks like you want some, huh?”
He was being so infuriatingly smug, deliberately lifting the perfectly chewy noodles with his chopsticks to show her. Choi Hyena felt something inside her snap.
“I’m not eating it! I said I’m not eating! You can have it all, you pig ba—”
In that instant, Kang Hyun-woo threw the ramen far away and rushed toward her, filling her vision.
‘Wh-what?? Was he th-that offended by me c-calling him a pig…??’
His charge was so intense that she squeezed her eyes shut without thinking.
“Get back!!!”
“…Huh?”
CRASH!! A massive, grotesque arm tore through the cloth covering the cave entrance and lunged for Choi Hyena.
‘I won’t make it!’
In a split second of accelerated thought, Kang Hyun-woo realized he wouldn’t be able to cast a spell in time and dropped his wand.
In a flash, not even a tenth of a second, he drew a sword from his inventory.
Magic flared intensely from the hand gripping the hilt.
[Imperial Army's Magic Sword]
[Grade: Rare]
[Imbuing with magic increases cutting power]
He poured most of his magic into the sword, maximizing its cutting power.
Due to the limits of its Rare grade and his own mana, it wasn’t powerful enough to slice through diamond, but it was more than enough to sever the mana beast’s arm.
“Hup!”
Slice— Blood gushed from the beast’s cleanly severed hand and wrist.
-KRAAAAAAH!!!
Ignoring the beast’s shriek of agony, Kang Hyun-woo grabbed Choi Hyena and dashed out of the cave.
Outside, a mana beast covered in pure white fur was clutching its severed wrist, writhing in pain. It looked like a yeti.
He was momentarily stunned by its massive frame—at least four meters tall—but this was his chance. The beast was thrashing in pain, its back completely exposed.
He set Choi Hyena down on the snow and sprinted toward the beast.
Channeling magic into his feet and thighs to enhance his jump, he plunged the sword into the nape of its neck.
Shunk— The blade sank in easier than he’d expected.
But he wasn’t done.
Even without a wand, which slowed his casting speed, it still took less than two seconds.
[Flame Circle]
BOOM!! A violently rotating explosion of fire erupted from the tip of his blade, blowing the yeti’s head apart.
The headless body dropped to its knees and collapsed.
In an instant, the pure white snowfield was stained dark red with blood.
“…What the hell was that?”
It was a mana beast he’d never seen before.
His knowledge of mana beasts was limited to fragmented lessons from school and a few popular posts on community forums.
“A Wh-White Yeti…”
Choi Hyena, her red hair now covered in white snow, stared at the beast’s corpse with a pale face.
“A White Yeti?”
“…It’s a C-rank mana beast.”
The moment he heard that, a single, irrepressible word rose from the pit of his stomach.
“…Fuck.”
Tiring—
[You have defeated the White Yeti.]
[First Kill Reward: 200 Coins]
It felt like they had ventured quite deep, but considering the typical size of a gate, this was still just the entrance area.
For a C-rank mana beast to appear here meant this gate had to be at least C+ rank.
If they were unlucky, it could even be B-rank.
“…I used too much magic.”
Even if it wasn’t an elite specimen, I thought my blade cut through the C-rank beast a little too easily. Turns out I’d squeezed out my magic without even realizing it.
On top of that, the magic I’d poured into Flame Circle was substantial.
“Do you have a wand or a staff with you?”
“…No.”
Right. It would be weird for someone to bring something like that to a marriage meeting.
Of course, not having equipment didn’t render a mage completely useless, but it was an undeniable fact that their overall magic power and casting speed would drop.
In a real battle where a tenth of a second could mean life or death, that was a fatal problem.
“Here, use these for now.”
I handed the Wood Wand and Magic Ring I’d been using to Choi Hyena.
“Then what about you…?”
“One of us has to be the vanguard. If we’re both in the rear, who’s going to draw the mana beasts’ aggro?”
No matter how strong a mage is, they’re ultimately a rearguard class.
Continuing to hunt mana beasts without a vanguard was like building a sandcastle, ready to collapse at any moment.
Since Choi Hyena was a 3rd Circle Mage, she had more firepower than me. It made sense for me to be the vanguard.
“What kind of mage stands in the vanguard!”
“You want to do it then?”
“Well…”
If there had been a mage with an aptitude for alchemy or summoning, the situation would have been much easier.
They could have just sent a golem or a familiar to the front.
But Choi Hyena’s family was famous for their generations of aptitude in the elemental class, specifically fire, and I hadn’t learned a single thing about summoning magic yet.
“It’s better if I do it, so stop complaining and just support me with magic from the back.”
The shelter they’d finally found was now soaked in the beast’s blood, making it unusable. Regretfully, they had to pack up the tent and move on.
“And before we go, put this on.”
“Huh?”
He tossed the now-dry fur coat to Choi Hyena.
He still couldn’t understand how the sole heir of the Seongbuk Choi family, famous for its pyromancers, could be more sensitive to the cold than him, but there was no time to leisurely listen to her story.
For now, he’d be grateful if she just didn’t collapse from the cold along the way.
“…Thanks.”
“If you’re thankful, call me darling.”
“Get lost.”
*
After the encounter with the White Yeti, they had two objectives.
One was to find a deep cave with a narrow entrance that they could block and defend.
The other was to clear out the mana beasts in a specific area to create a safe zone.
“White Yetis are pack animals. We were lucky it was just one earlier, but they usually travel in groups of ten to as many as thirty.”
With Choi Hyena’s explanation, the plan to turn the area where they’d hunted the White Yeti into a safe zone was off the table.
Trying to create a safe zone in a place that could be crawling with over twenty C-rank mana beasts was far too reckless.
In the end, they had no choice but to head back to the starting point where they had first woken up inside the gate.
“It’s fucking cold.”
Haaa…
The air was so cold it made his teeth ache with every breath.
In six days, the gate’s exit would open at the starting point.
They had to get out the moment the Gate Break occurred, so setting up a shelter nearby would be ideal. But there was no suitable place in the empty snowfield, and there was no telling how many mana beasts would flock there, trying to cross over to Earth.
Logically, it was an insane choice, but they knew they had to return to the entrance area anyway.
Inside a gate, stronger mana beasts appeared closer to the core. Conversely, weaker beasts inhabited the area around the starting point.
Now that they knew this was a C+ rank gate or higher, they had to set up camp near the starting point to avoid running into mid-boss level monsters.
‘The right move is to stay near there for now, then move to a new shelter with one or two days left.’
If they encountered a mana beast they couldn’t handle, their survival wouldn’t be guaranteed.
“…Or so I thought.”
As they were crossing the snowfield amidst a fierce blizzard, a bear appeared before them.
It was incomparably larger than an ordinary bear.
Its ferocious appearance was matched by deadly claws, sharp enough to tear my body into dozens of pieces in an instant.
KWANG!
Without so much as a greeting, the giant son of a bitch swiped its claws at me.
I dodged quickly enough to avoid injury, but the impact left a deep gouge in the snow.
“It’s an Ice Bear!”
“What’s its rank?!”
“C-rank!”
Another C-rank?
‘Should I be relieved it’s not C+?’
It was no comfort at all.
The appearance of a C-rank mana beast this close to the starting point meant the probability of this being a B-rank gate had just increased.
Fuck.
“I’ll draw its aggro! Get a spell ready!”
I charged the Ice Bear. Close combat was dangerous, but if Choi Hyena got caught up in it, things could get even worse.
The straight sword, imbued with magic, glowed with a blue light, but I couldn’t expect the same cutting power as before.
A C-rank mana beast was, frankly, still too much for someone at my level.
Even though the beasts in the underground dungeon had all been elite specimens, they were ultimately around C-rank at best.
If I were alone, I would have struggled against the Ice Bear. Especially if it didn’t give me an opening like the yeti did.
The distance to the Ice Bear closed. It clearly had no intention of letting me be, charging at me much faster than I’d expected. I had to roll across the snow to evade it.
I immediately regained my footing and slashed at the Ice Bear’s hind leg.
SLASH!
‘Shit.’
It was shallow.
The Ice Bear roared from the searing pain in its leg, then slammed its front paw down at me with murderous eyes.
In a situation where a clumsy dodge could get me torn to shreds by its claws, I abandoned the idea of evading early on.
CLANG! I blocked the Ice Bear’s claws with the back of my sword.
‘Nngh…!!’
The tremendous impact made my head ring. If I hadn’t reinforced my entire body with magic beforehand, something would have definitely broken.
“N…ow!! Shoot it, now!!”
I felt a massive wave of magic from behind me—a high-power spell that a 3rd Circle Mage had focused all her concentration on creating.
[Water Cannon]
KABOOM!!
A cannonball of highly compressed water shot forward at high speed and blew away the space between the Ice Bear’s eyes.
Thud— With a large hole in its head, the Ice Bear collapsed, spewing a torrent of blood.
[You have defeated the Ice Bear.]
[First Kill Reward: 200 Coins]
Just like with the White Yeti, the snowfield was stained red by the dark blood pouring from the corpse.
I collapsed onto the snow, panting heavily.
“Are you okay…?”
Seeing me, Choi Hyena rushed over.
Her face was filled with worry.
“…Wasn’t I supposed to be a noble?”
According to my original plan, I should have been a member of a stable C-rank party by now, coasting along by shooting off spells from the rearguard.
But now?
I’m fighting mana beasts head-on with a sword.
The reality that I had once again become an untouchable-class warrior was enough to bring tears to my eyes.
If this isn’t hell, what is?
As I was wallowing in self-pity, Choi Hyena tapped me.
“What.”
“…I think you need to see this.”
But the real hell was just beginning.
In the distance, a pack of fucking huge wolves was charging toward us.